The present study was carried out during 2014-15 in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, which is situated between 31º52’00” to 31º58’00” North latitude and 76º13’00” to 77º44’00” East longitudes.The cumulative chill units hours available for apple crop were calculated by using UTAH model for the period of 1986 to 2015 and a decrease of 6.38 chill units(CU) hours per year was recorded at Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh. Chill units for the last three decades i.e. 1986-1995, 1996-2005 and 2006-2015 also revealed a decreasing trend of the order of 63.79 CU decreased per decade.Monthly accumulation of chill unit hours during the same period for each winter month (November, December, January and February) revealed maximum decrease of 2.186 CU per year was observed for the month of February. Trend analysis of last five years 2011-2015 showed there was a huge decrease of 14.98 chill units per year. Data on apple productivity in Kullu district for last decade (2005-2014) showed a decreasing trend of the order of 0.183 tons/ha /year as per the regression equation y = -0.183x + 5.745. Thus the climatic conditions for apple cultivation in the Kullu district will be becoming unfavorable in the coming years.

The trends of important weather parameters in Kullu district of hilly state have been presented. The season wise analysis showed that there is no explicit linear trend in weather parameters over a period of time. The increasing and decreasing trends were observed in all the season as the cubic function showed to be the best fit. Among the analyzed weather parameters maximum temperature cubic function was to best fit with significant r2 value of 0.57, for minimum temperature and relative humidity r2 value was 0.67 and 0.62 respectively. In order to know the impact of climate change and people's perception about climate change, a survey was conducted. About 42.72% people perceived there is 30-50% decrease in productivity of cereal crops, while in case of fruits 28.64% people perceived that there is 20-30% increase in productivity and for same commodity 15.05% people also assumed there is 10-20% decrease in productivity and 13.60% believed there has been no change in productivity for fruits. In case of vegetable 53.88% respondent anticipated that there is 30-50% increase in productivity. The perception about the productivity of pulses showed that 26.70% believing slight increase in productivity while some perceived moderate increase in productivity and some anticipated no change in productivity.

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract:Genetic divergence was worked out in the new germplasm of apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.) including 42 genotypes. Mahalanobis's D 2 statistics was applied for identifying the potential parents to be involved in the hybridization programme for trait specific improvement or selecting better segregants. On the basis of performance for various traits, genotypes were grouped into three clusters and maximum numbers of genotypes i.e. 28 were accommodated in cluster I , while 10 and 4 genotypes were arranged in cluster II and III respectively. The average intra cluster distance was maximum in cluster II (2.214) and minimum in cluster III (1.212). Inter cluster distance was maximum between cluster II and III (5.077) indicating that hybridization between genotypes from cluster II and III can be utilized for getting the superior recombinants in segregating generations. On the basis of cluster means for various characters , cluster II was found superior for shoot thickness (0.34cm), inter -nodal length (2.38cm), number of lenticels (62.10) and leaf blade length (8.79cm) whereas cluster III was found superior for leaf blade width (5.10cm), petiole length (2.64cm) and leaf blade ratio (3.62). Hence, hybridization between parents from cluster II and cluster III for these characters can produce better recombinants in segregating generations.